Fox's beauty pageant flops; CBS ratings look pretty all week

NEW YORK (AP) — Some say "beauty is as beauty does." On Sunday, "The Miss USA Pageant" with its bevy of beauties, didn't do it for Fox. It delivered a pretty low 3 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

To make matters worse, that was a significant decline from last year, when Fox first aired it, which itself marked an audience erosion from 2014, NBC's last telecast before that network cut ties with the pageant, which then was owned by future President Donald Trump.

The pageant's ratings were only part of a less-than-pretty picture for Fox, which placed fourth in prime time among broadcast networks last week with an average of 5.9 million viewers.

Overall it was a fairly typical week, with CBS scoring big with its juggernaut of hit comedies, dramas and "60 Minutes." It claimed the top five shows, seven of the top 10 slots and 13 of the top 20.

CBS averaged 9.7 million viewers. NBC was runner-up with 8.2 million viewers, followed by ABC with 6.2 million, then Fox (whose top-rated show, "Empire," ranked 20th). Univision had 1.82 million, The CW averaged 1.80 million, Telemundo had 1.53 million and ION had 1.24 million viewers.

Among cable networks, Fox News Channel was the prime-time winner, averaging 2.28 million viewers, followed by TNT with 1.99 million and MSNBC with 1.77 million.

More good fortune for CBS: "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" continued with its winning ways. It beat NBC runner-up "The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon" for the 15th consecutive week, scoring 3.07 million viewers versus 2.68 million. Compared with the same week a year ago, "The Late Show" is up 25 percent.

In the weeknight news wars, "ABC World News Tonight" took first place with 7.48 million viewers. "NBC Nightly News" was close behind with 7.41 million. In third place, "CBS Evening News" had 5.86 million viewers.